S  M  L   /   N  J
                  1  1  0  .  4  4      N  E  W  S
			
  		         November 6, 2003
			      WARNING
  	This working version is believed to be stable, but
	we have not run our full regression-test suite.
             HOME:  http://www.smlnj.org/index.html
             FILES: http://smlnj.cs.uchicago.edu/dist/working/110.44/ 
Summary:
Again, there are a number of important bug fixes and updates, mostly to
the Basis library and the installer.
Details:
  - Basis: 
 
  - 
    
      - fixed bugs and improved code for Real.{from,to}LargeInt
 
      - fixed bug in Posix.ProcEnv.times
 
      - changed inputLine
functions to return an option
 
      - implemented native
        int32->real64
conversion
 
      - slices implemented according to spec
 
      - Time.{from,to}NanoSeconds
added to Time
 
      - made SOCKET API
match the spec
 
      - OS-specific details of socket implementation moved into
separate files (this makes it possible to share the bulk of the code
between Unix and Win32)
 
      - added signature SYNCHRONOUS_SOCKET
to Basis
 
      - precision of real64 is 53 (not 52)
 
      - added openVector,
        nullRd, and nullWr to PRIM_IO 
 
    
   
  - installer: 
 
  - 
    
      - new installer (which is mostly written in SML) is no longer
optional (old installer has been removed)
 
      - the ML code of the installer is now in its own library and
gets compiled by CMB.make;
the installer script simply invokes sml -m
$smlnj/installer.cm
(the ML code does not have to be compiled as
part
of the installation process) 
      - minor improvements and bugfixes
 
      - sense environment variable CM_DIR_ARC that lets one
override
the default name for CM meta-data (default is .cm -- see CM section)
 
      - sense value of INSTALLDIR
environment variable and behave
accordingly
 
      - dont_move_libraries
directive eliminated from
        config/targets
(This was a legacy mechanism which turned out to be
broken anyway.) 
 
    
   
  - Scripts:
 
  - 
    
      - made .bat-files
Win95-compatible
 
      - changed default @SMLalloc
parameter for x86/celeron to 64k
      
 
    
   
  - CM:
 
  - 
    
      - default name of meta-data directory changed from CM to .cm
 
      - a different name can be chosen at installation time
 
      - added missing wrapper for privilege primitive in
        $smlnj/viscomp/core.cm
 
    
   
  - CML:
 
  - 
    
      - tracked Basis changes (non-blocking Socket functons are left
out since they are redundant: CML_SOCKET
is defined in terms of
        SYNCHRONOUS_SOCKET)
 
      - make use of non-blocking socket functions from Basis; CML
socket implementation is now OS-independent
 
    
   
  - Interactive Loop:
 
  - 
    
      - added hook to prettyprinter so it can invoke the autoloader
if a qid to be printed is not currently bound in the toplevel
environment; this eliminates many instances where the prettyprinter
used to print ? in front
of a name
 
    
   
  - runtime
 
  - 
    
      - works with Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)
 
    
   
  - MLRISC
 
  -